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The local office of the Yes campaign is just across the corridor from us. Bigup. Vote, people. Doesn't matter who/what it's for. Spoil your ballot if you have

The local office of the Yes campaign is just across the corridor from us. Bigup. Vote, people. Doesn't matter who/what it's for. Spoil your ballot if you have to. Just make your voice heard.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
Somewhat strange to be advocating that people should vote for anything, when one of the big issues at stake is a more representative voting system that reduces (but does not eliminate) the chance that your vote will be wasted and have no impact whatsoever. I've long felt that the popularity of this kind of encouragement to vote, as if it was a civic duty, regardless of how broken the system was, has held back reform of the system. So vote Yes on AV, vote in scottish elections with partial-PR and feel free not to vote in any election where your vote is not going to count and explain why at great and boring length to anyone who tells you that you have to vote or you have no right to complain etc.
- jerf 16y ago
  Votes are rarely actually "wasted", even in FPTP, and people really need to come to a better understanding of that fact because you get the "smartest" people incorrectly thinking their vote is wasted and thus cutting themselves out of the voting pool. There is a huge difference between 50.1% A, 49.9% B and 85% A, 15% B. One election produces a politician constantly swinging to the center and watching his back for the next election, the other produces one that acts freely on his beliefs. There is a huge difference between 30% A, 40% B, 30% third-party and 10% A, 89% B, and 1% third-party. One clearly tells the dominant A and B parties that the third-party has tapped into something the voters care deeply about but they've failed to serve, and generally at least one, if not both, of the dominant parties will scramble to serve that demographic. The other says that the vast bulk of people are at least mostly satisfied with the choices (which is all you ever can have). It is this constant scrambling to serve dissatisfied third-party voters that creates the two dominant parties in the first place, not some sort of mega-conspiracy. Even in FPTP, in an iterated voting situation (which is what we have), third party votes in an otherwise uncontested election aren't wasted, they're probably louder on a per-vote basis than the rest of the horde. If you find yourself nearly alone voting Green/Libertarian/Constitution/whatever, that's because most people are not so dissatisfied that they have to vote third party. You're a fringe vote. (So am I.) But it isn't "wasted". Please note I am only defending my position that votes are not "wasted" in FPTP. I am not defending the proposition that FPTP is optimal. There may be better systems. Most, if not all, voting systems I know of exhibit the property where a vote is never truly "wasted" in an iterated voting situation, so this argument is neither an attack or defense of FPTP since this is not a unique characteristic of any system. (It is however only one in a pile, by definition of vote. I do fear some people are ultimately complaining that their vote is wasted precisely because we are voting in the first place and not simply taking their opinion as dictatorial writ. There is a certain fundamental dilution-of-voice that you will experience in any voting scheme; arguably, the "big idea" of democracy is precisely that your voice is at least in theory no louder than any other.)
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    The only people who vote "fringe" in FPTP are people who are so disenfranchised by both major parties that they are interchangeably bad to them, they actually like the one they "know" will win anyway, or alternatively know it's a lost cause, so they take the opportunity to register a protest vote without the risk of changing the actual result to a worse outcome from their perspective. Everyone else is voting tactically for the lesser of two evils. So not only are votes "wasted" in the sense of being thrown away on parties that have no chance of winning, they're also actively miscounted as support for party A or B, when often they're registering revulsion at the opposite party. AV isn't perfect but the one thing it does do better than FPTP is allow you to signal your true preference in exactly this manner without that preventing you from expressing which of the major candidates you prefer. It doesn't directly translates your single vote into 1/population worth of representation like PR, because there's only one winner from each region, but it's certainly a reduction in waste and a better reflection of voter desires.
mseebach 16y ago
No. To paraphrase Dijkstra, voting is to democracy as telescopes are to astronomy. It DOES matter who/what you vote for. And if you don't believe that, why would you believe that doing anything at all with your ballot counts as making your voice heard? Democracy is about participation. Not campaigning, participation. You need to make your voice heard at all times, not just at elections (frankly, elections are probably the least effective time to make your voice heard). Be informed about the issues, challenge your assumptions and debate your opinions (preferably with people you disagree with). If you can't or won't do those things, you don't live in a democracy, you live in an oligarchy that happens to mutate roughly every decade.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  Obviously I don't believe that it doesnt matter who you vote for, what I was trying to say was that I'd rather have someone vote in a way that I disagree with, than not vote at all. It matters who you vote for, but it doesn't matter to me. I'm trying to make it clear that I'm not advocating voting in an attempt to advance my own agenda, but rather out of a simple desire for people to make use of their rights as citizens of a democracy. Notice that I also advocated ballot spoiling as an alternative to casting a vote for any of the choices presented. If you really can't bring yourself to vote for any of the parties, and I certainly wouldn't blame you there, at least go down to the polling station and write "YOU ARE ALL BASTARDS" across the ballot in your own blood or something. That way, you still show up in the turnout figures, avoiding the false impression of voter apathy. And yes, I definitely agree that voting is probably the least important part of democratic participation, although a lot of the other parts are becoming increasingly frustrated around here...

The local office of the Yes campaign is just across the corridor from us. Bigup. Vote, people. Doesn't matter who/what it's for. Spoil your ballot if you have to. Just make your voice heard.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

Somewhat strange to be advocating that people should vote for anything, when one of the big issues at stake is a more representative voting system that reduces (but does not eliminate) the chance that your vote will be wasted and have no impact whatsoever. I've long felt that the popularity of this kind of encouragement to vote, as if it was a civic duty, regardless of how broken the system was, has held back reform of the system. So vote Yes on AV, vote in scottish elections with partial-PR and feel free not to vote in any election where your vote is not going to count and explain why at great and boring length to anyone who tells you that you have to vote or you have no right to complain etc.

jerf 16y ago
Votes are rarely actually "wasted", even in FPTP, and people really need to come to a better understanding of that fact because you get the "smartest" people incorrectly thinking their vote is wasted and thus cutting themselves out of the voting pool. There is a huge difference between 50.1% A, 49.9% B and 85% A, 15% B. One election produces a politician constantly swinging to the center and watching his back for the next election, the other produces one that acts freely on his beliefs. There is a huge difference between 30% A, 40% B, 30% third-party and 10% A, 89% B, and 1% third-party. One clearly tells the dominant A and B parties that the third-party has tapped into something the voters care deeply about but they've failed to serve, and generally at least one, if not both, of the dominant parties will scramble to serve that demographic. The other says that the vast bulk of people are at least mostly satisfied with the choices (which is all you ever can have). It is this constant scrambling to serve dissatisfied third-party voters that creates the two dominant parties in the first place, not some sort of mega-conspiracy. Even in FPTP, in an iterated voting situation (which is what we have), third party votes in an otherwise uncontested election aren't wasted, they're probably louder on a per-vote basis than the rest of the horde. If you find yourself nearly alone voting Green/Libertarian/Constitution/whatever, that's because most people are not so dissatisfied that they have to vote third party. You're a fringe vote. (So am I.) But it isn't "wasted". Please note I am only defending my position that votes are not "wasted" in FPTP. I am not defending the proposition that FPTP is optimal. There may be better systems. Most, if not all, voting systems I know of exhibit the property where a vote is never truly "wasted" in an iterated voting situation, so this argument is neither an attack or defense of FPTP since this is not a unique characteristic of any system. (It is however only one in a pile, by definition of vote. I do fear some people are ultimately complaining that their vote is wasted precisely because we are voting in the first place and not simply taking their opinion as dictatorial writ. There is a certain fundamental dilution-of-voice that you will experience in any voting scheme; arguably, the "big idea" of democracy is precisely that your voice is at least in theory no louder than any other.)
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  The only people who vote "fringe" in FPTP are people who are so disenfranchised by both major parties that they are interchangeably bad to them, they actually like the one they "know" will win anyway, or alternatively know it's a lost cause, so they take the opportunity to register a protest vote without the risk of changing the actual result to a worse outcome from their perspective. Everyone else is voting tactically for the lesser of two evils. So not only are votes "wasted" in the sense of being thrown away on parties that have no chance of winning, they're also actively miscounted as support for party A or B, when often they're registering revulsion at the opposite party. AV isn't perfect but the one thing it does do better than FPTP is allow you to signal your true preference in exactly this manner without that preventing you from expressing which of the major candidates you prefer. It doesn't directly translates your single vote into 1/population worth of representation like PR, because there's only one winner from each region, but it's certainly a reduction in waste and a better reflection of voter desires.

mseebach 16y ago

No. To paraphrase Dijkstra, voting is to democracy as telescopes are to astronomy. It DOES matter who/what you vote for. And if you don't believe that, why would you believe that doing anything at all with your ballot counts as making your voice heard? Democracy is about participation. Not campaigning, participation. You need to make your voice heard at all times, not just at elections (frankly, elections are probably the least effective time to make your voice heard). Be informed about the issues, challenge your assumptions and debate your opinions (preferably with people you disagree with). If you can't or won't do those things, you don't live in a democracy, you live in an oligarchy that happens to mutate roughly every decade.

JonnieCache 16y ago
Obviously I don't believe that it doesnt matter who you vote for, what I was trying to say was that I'd rather have someone vote in a way that I disagree with, than not vote at all. It matters who you vote for, but it doesn't matter to me. I'm trying to make it clear that I'm not advocating voting in an attempt to advance my own agenda, but rather out of a simple desire for people to make use of their rights as citizens of a democracy. Notice that I also advocated ballot spoiling as an alternative to casting a vote for any of the choices presented. If you really can't bring yourself to vote for any of the parties, and I certainly wouldn't blame you there, at least go down to the polling station and write "YOU ARE ALL BASTARDS" across the ballot in your own blood or something. That way, you still show up in the turnout figures, avoiding the false impression of voter apathy. And yes, I definitely agree that voting is probably the least important part of democratic participation, although a lot of the other parts are becoming increasingly frustrated around here...